□ Zhang Guangxing
Today, I received the latest issue of Shangdu Culture.
I have a habit of turning over the newspapers and periodicals donated by friends or relevant units when I have free time, as if this is a courtesy to others. In fact, the significance does not stop there, because even factory newspapers and even village newspapers, looking at their reports, especially reading their supplement editions (literary and art editions), can often read some sincere works.
Today's issue of "Shangdu Culture", there is such an article, a look at the title attracted me - "Letters exchanged into remembrance". What prompted the author to write this article was that when he was moving, he accidentally dragged out a dusty old cardboard box from under the bed, and he himself could not remember what the cardboard box contained, and he had repeatedly thought about finding the letters of the early letterhead era, and put them into action, but rummaged through the boxes and cabinets, and searched for nothing. He thought that those old letters had long been scattered, but he did not expect to open this old cardboard box with a lot of dust, it was really "a thousand hundred degrees of search for him in the crowd", and it took no effort at all. His excitement that day was conceivable. He did not move anything anymore, so he moved over a small stool, sat down on the edge of the cardboard box, opened the first letter, opened the second letter, and the past came to his mind, and at the same time, there were distant and sweet memories of reading and writing letters in the dead of night.
It seems that we are about the same age. In the first half of our lives, there was no internet, no mobile phones, no text messages and WeChat, greetings and contacts between each other, mainly by letters.
I remember when I came home from college, among the heavy luggage I carried with me, in addition to the more than a hundred books I bought in four years of college with the money saved from between my teeth, the most precious thing was a stack of letters.
After graduation, I returned to this small city in my hometown, and the four-year classmates were scattered all over the province (at that time, Hangzhou University was mainly recruited and distributed in the province, and a small number of students in the Chinese department were divided into central organs), and Guan Shan blocked it, so the deep friendship poured on the pen and paper. Especially in the years when I just graduated, it was very hot for classmates to come and go.
Letters from classmates were sent to my work unit and also to my hometown. I go back to my hometown once a week, and my parents stack the letters they receive that week. I remember once when my father handed me a letter, he asked me: "Who wrote the letter, so thick?" Break the envelopes. "When I read the letter, my father also said that everyone in the village said that you were in love. In those days, couriers would put the letter in the village department or in the village sugar, tobacco and liquor shop, and then call the villagers to pick it up themselves. When my father went to get it, the villagers around the small shop said, not in love, who said so much nonsense?
But it was a letter sent to me by my roommate Amu.
I'm embarrassed to mention these things now. Because I was not as fortunate as the author, all my letters were lost, including the thick letters that Ammu had written to me. I no longer expect that one day, in some corner, a cardboard box or a wooden box will be dragged out and opened, and inside will be the letters that I have been thinking about day and night. Because I never brought my letters to the new house, not even in the old house. They didn't know how to get lost when I owned my first city house.
Not only these letters, but also the textbooks and class notes for my four years of college are gone.
It's a sad history to say.
After graduation, I was fortunate to be able to get a public house of less than eight square meters, and I didn't need to rent a house outside, and later I moved to the government second guest house next to Jiufeng Park, which was also a room, but it was very large, about twenty square meters, so I brought the books and letters that originally existed in my hometown into the city. At the same time, living in Erzhao, there was also a middle school classmate of mine.
When it was time for me to get married, the so-called fund-raising construction of the unit had not yet started, so I had to rent a house in a residential area. I want to thank my wife and children, who followed me through the days of renting someone else's house for several years. Especially when the children are young, diapers, change of clothes, and toys fill the house, but fortunately, we rent on the side of our parents-in-law's house and do not need to open our own family.
Finally, the house was renovated with funds raised, and we couldn't wait to move in. The pride and joy of owning my own home has made me happy for many days. What makes me even happier is that the books that have been piled up everywhere have finally had their own space.
It was a north-facing room, and the first collection of essays of my life was titled The North Window Collection. And because the house is close to the Xijiang River (Xijiang, which can also be regarded as the mother river of the Huangyan people), my second collection of essays is entitled "Xijiang Collection".
With my own house, I remembered the books and letters that I had been living with for many years with my old classmates. When I moved away from the second trick, I entrusted them all to my old classmates. But when I returned to the second move, I learned that the old classmate had not only left the second move long ago, but also married and started a family, but also sent to the township to work. We haven't been in touch for years. When he got back in touch, he couldn't remember the old things I had pinned on him. He said that at that time, he was also anxious to move to the new house, and his friends came together and disposed of their own things in the second room as waste, and your old things must be in it.
I was in a daze.
When I think about it now, these old things of mine really don't have any value. The textbooks of the early 1980s were all old, and as for the letters, they were nothing more than young people who did not know the real taste of life. But I can't put it down in my heart. For example, when I was writing a memoir about the teachers, I wanted to go through the notes of that year. And those letters, although they are forced to say sad words, also show innocence and innocence. If they are still there today, they will help me retrieve many memories of my youth, and more importantly, they may be the last products of the handwritten paper letter era.
It is precisely because handwritten paper letters are very rare, so I cherish the occasional paper letterS I can receive in these years. Mr. Zhao Huifeng, who served as the director of Ningbo Television Station (and later the director of the Ningbo Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Film and Television News and Publications), was a teacher I respected, very talented, and I heard that he was also a calligrapher. After receiving the two collections of essays I had sent him, he wrote me back, and although it was only a text message, I was deeply touched by the encouragement I had. In particular, this is a handwritten text message written by him, which makes me feel his solemnity. In fact, we had mobile phone numbers stored between us (there was no WeChat at that time), and he could send me text messages, but he still insisted on handwriting. It is precisely because of his handwriting, although he uses a water pen, I also experience his unrestrained writing style.
At the end of the letter, Mr. Zhao Huifeng gave me a poem that he improvised:
Xijiang Boying Taimiao,
The north window dream has not been sold.
Envy Junshu Mountain enjoys seclusion,
Call it the turbid waves of the sea.
This letter not only expresses his love for me, his inner thoughts, his creative talent, but also has the value of appreciating calligraphy, so it is regarded as a treasure by me.
I also unexpectedly received a handwritten letter from my mentor, Mr. Cai Yijiang. It is not the task of this article to tell the story of Mr. Cai Yijiang's family and Huangyan' fate, but it is precisely because I learned about the fate of Teacher Cai's family and Huangyan that I remembered to contact Teacher Cai and invite Teacher Cai to come to Huangyan, where I lived when I was a child.
I wrote and printed this letter on my computer. With the letter, I sent a collection of essays, "Xijiang Collection". Unexpectedly, I quickly received a small package sent to me by Teacher Cai, and opened it, which was all Teacher Cai's own red studies works. Mr. Cai is the founding head of the Chinese Red Society and the founding head of the Dream of the Red Chamber Journal, and he is a famous red scholar in China. He attached me a letter to the book, saying that he was interested in several of the "reading red essays" in my book. So he confessed that when he opened my book, he mainly read these post-reading essays about "Dream of the Red Chamber". It got me a little excited. I am just a regular reader of "Dream of the Red Chamber", and Teacher Cai is a big red scholar.
Teacher Cai is also a calligrapher. It was when I saw a gift from Teacher Cai in his collection at the home of a literary friend in Huangyan that I learned about the origin of Teacher Cai and his family with Huangyan.
Although this letter written to me by Teacher Cai is also written with a pen, the whole letter is a beautiful line book, which can be appreciated as a calligraphy work.
2022.1.21
About author:Zhang Guangxun, graduated from the Department of Chinese of Hangzhou University, is currently working for Taizhou Radio and Television Station, senior journalist, vice chairman of Taizhou Municipal Direct Writers Association.
This article is the original work of Qianjiang Evening News, without permission, it is forbidden to reprint, copy, excerpt, rewrite and carry out network dissemination of all works of copyright use, otherwise this newspaper will follow judicial channels to pursue the legal responsibility of the infringer.